By Claudia Hirsch

NEW YORK (MNI) – Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Esther
George Wednesday reiterated her commitment to eradicating the notion of
too-big-to-fail financial institutions, tightening capital standards and
shrinking the government safety nets that grew up around these mammoth
financial companies.

Answering audience questions following a speech at a Levy Economics
Institute conference, George said, to resolve the “challenge” of
resolving too-big-to-fail, “we (must) focus first on capitalization and
quality of capital in these large institutions, and second, take a
careful look at these activities.”

She questioned the move, in the midst of 2008 financial crisis, to
allow individual financial institutions to conduct both investment
banking and commercial banking activities.

“We must step back and look at our decision to combine these two
things,” said George, a former bank examiner. In her prepared remarks,
she said she favors “some constraints on the type of activities that can
be conducted by institutions protected by the safety net.”

On capitalization, George said, appropriate levels must be sought
that would “temper” the amount of risk an institution takes on,
standards that were not in the run-up to the near implosion of the
financial system.

“I think we know from this experience that higher capital levels
are needed,” she said, but added that risk profiles vary by bank.

“That’s why we have to find what I call a stabilizer,” said George,
who will vote on the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy-setting Open
Market Committee in 2013.

“I think the leverage ratio is that stabilizer,” she said of risk
analysis, such as a debt-to-equity ratio, that gauges a company’s
capacity to fulfill its financial obligations. Carefully calibrating
these ratios would provide the one proven cushion that would absorb
financial shocks, she said.

George said policy makers must reverse the expansion of government
safety nets for large financial institutions, such as federal bailouts,
that have contributed to moral hazard. She said there is a role for
public safety nets, yet “once the crisis passes, it seems to lose our
attention.”

“How to shrink them is one of the challenges that we face.”

She also said that increasing transparency in derivatives markets
must be part of the financial reform path ahead.

“That way you can see counterparty exposure, you can see pricing of
these instruments,” she said. “That’s critical in understanding the
risk.”

In her prepared remarks, George said that “ending TBTF is the only
sure way to curtail the expansion of public safety nets and break the
pattern of repeated and ever-escalating financial crises.”

** MNI New York Bureau: 212-669-6430 **

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